


coming down hard

by trailmydust



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:30:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6394600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trailmydust/pseuds/trailmydust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has to fix this. The thought echoes in Kavinsky’s mind, urgent and all consuming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	coming down hard

**Author's Note:**

> needed some soft (softer?) prokopinsky in my life. apparently this is it.  
> wasn't too sure what warnings to use so let me know if you think I need to add something! also, hasn't been beta'd so...sorry?
> 
> title from Helena Beat by Foster the People

Kavinsky wakes to a void, his mouth dry and tasting of ash but no memory to explain why. The pink light of sunset slants in through half closed blinds, highlights an overflowing ashtray and tipped over bottles of vodka. There’s someone propped up against a chest of drawers, shadow concealing their face until Kavinsky crawls closer. Prokopenko, eyes closed and vomit all down his front. There’s a grey cast to his skin and he’s strangely cool to the touch when Kavinsky reaches over to shake him.

Time seems to warp around him as he watches Prokopenko’s body slump limp and unresponsive from his grasp, each second taking an eternity but minutes passing in the blink of an eye. Kavinsky stares at Prokopenko’s chest, willing him to take a breath but he remains shockingly still and the longer Prokopenko goes without a breath, the harder it is to keep himself under control. The panic sitting in his chest keeps expanding, pushing and pushing until he can’t get enough air and his stomach is rolling.

Kavinsky blinks and time skips forward, finds him on his hands and knees staring down at a pool of his own vomit, shaking and shaking. There’s a wet gasping coming from somewhere far away and for a moment he thinks, hopes, it’s Prokopenko but then something splashes into the vomit and he realises it’s him. Crying and gasping and falling apart.

“Friends don’t let friends do drugs alone,” Kavinsky remembers Prokopenko saying, grin lopsided, when he’d first found Kavinsky sitting on the floor of his bedroom contemplating two bags of pills he’d bought from some kid in the year above them. 

Prokopenko had never let Kavinsky do anything alone, not since he’d sworn, fierce and awkward in seventh grade, that he wouldn’t let Kavinsky be alone anymore.

He has to fix this. The thought echoes in Kavinsky’s mind, urgent and all consuming. It makes him desperate, makes him clumsy in ways that he rarely is, picking up Prokopenko's bag instead of his own, choking on his dream pill when he tries to down it. He feels himself falling, holding the image of Prokopenko in his mind as he’s thrown into the dream.

~

It’s the same as it always is, the forest and the clearing, the clouds hanging heavy and dark in the sky but he barely spares a thought for it, needing to snatch Prokopenko before the dream warps him. Kavinsky sprints through the trees, twisting away from grasping branches and stumbles into the clearing.

There’s a boy there, ash blond and tall, wearing the right kind of clothes but even before Kavinsky gets close, he can tell this Prokopenko isn’t right. His shoulders are too straight, his posture too good; no loose limbed slouch that invites you closer. Kavinsky growls, frustration and fear wrapping around him and lifting him back out of the dream.

He barely thinks before he snatches up a second pill, he cannot fail at this. He will not fail at this but the dream has a mind of its own and with each dream Prokopenko seems to slip further and further away from him, the outside easily perfected but the spark that makes him Prokopenko fading. Frustration twists his gut, burns up his throat and makes him scream and scream, makes him wonder if maybe these hollow, butchered clones are all he really knows of Prokopenko.

Kavinsky's pulled hundreds of things from his dreams, all perfect, all extraordinary and yet the one thing he wants more than anything is beyond his grasp. Kavinsky stares at the last dream pill, rolls it between his fingers before chucking it against the opposite wall and watching it disappear behind his desk. He inhales slowly, closing his eyes, and exhales on a laugh that gets more and more hysterical until he’s crying with it.

His touch is destruction and his love is death, it was crazy that he’d thought they’d escaped. Kavinsky wonders if he should have warned them, before he’d embedded them in his life, made them dependent on him. It hardly matters now anyway, he thinks, tilting his head slightly so he can see Prokopenko from the corner of his eye. The quiet, motionless body is so unlike Prokopenko that for a moment Kavinsky wonders if he hasn’t accidently brought back a copy. He reaches over just to be sure and flinches back as his finger brushes over Prokopenko’s ice cold skin. He presses a fist against his lips, refuses to let out the noise that wants to escape. He buries the sound, the feeling, down under his chest, curls himself around it and lets his mind go blank.

~

Kavinsky’s first aware of the soft sighing of trees, the gentle flickering of light through the leaves. It’s warm enough that he feels the prickle of sweat between his should blades, can hear the hum of insects. He flicks his eyes open, tips a pair of white rimmed sunglasses down onto his nose when the leaves shift with the breeze and sunlight envelops him.

He blinks and looks around curiously before the odd sense of familiarity resolves itself. It’s different in full sunlight, in what appears to be late spring but the shape of the clearing is the same, even if it’s carpeted in flowers. The types of trees are the same too, the bark still rough and grey though the leaves are now vibrant green.

There’s nothing in the clearing that he can see from here, the dream space empty in a way it never is when he takes a pill. The forest feels different now that he isn’t here to take from it, still alive but in a living, growing way rather than the smothering feeling of watchfulness present in all of his previous dreams.

Kavinsky takes his time walking into the clearing, perches on top of an unnaturally flat rock that sits what must be dead centre of the clearing and waits. He’s unsure why he’s waiting or what he’s waiting for but the quiet expectancy of the dream keeps the desperation and panic of the days earlier dreams away.

Slowly, Prokopenko fills his mind but in a strange, nebulous manner that Kavinsky can’t focus on, everything about Prokopenko remaining disjointed and separate. Here, now, the incompleteness of his memory of Prokopenko is no longer painful, the dream taking the sharp ache in his chest and drawing it away.

The longer he waits, the more the dream seems to take, bits of Prokopenko plucked from his mind and consumed by the dream. It takes the rasp of his laugh and the smell of his deodorant, pinches his chewed down fingernails and the unevenness of the freckles spread across his cheeks. Distress crests and falls in his chest, soothed by the whisper of leaves that seems to say _borrowed, not taken_.

Time passes though the sun doesn’t move from its place in the sky, instead flowers bloom and die, the heat intensifies and the ends of the leaves burn and turn brown. Prokopenko is just a name to a void in his mind but quiet expectancy has turned to shivering anticipation, making him twitchy and restless.

Dry grass crackles as something walks into the clearing, startling the birds into silence and jerking Kavinsky to his feet. He can’t turn around, his heart beating too hard and too fast in his chest. Why is he afraid? The sound of movement comes closer and the trees shudder, appearing to laugh, as Kavinsky tries to make himself turn around. _For you_ , the breeze says, swirling around his legs and urging him to turn.

As soon as he does, the whole dream seems to sigh, collapsing in on itself until it’s just Kavinsky and a boy, separated by a strangely flat rock. The boy is tall with blond hair, has awkwardly sloped shoulders and ears that stick out. Kavinsky feels something wet on his face and wonders how the weather changed so dramatically, so quickly.

The boy reaches out to flick Kavinsky on the forehead, swipe a thumb under his eyes. “Get it together, K,” he says, smile lopsided. The touch returns Prokopenko to him in an overwhelming rush, knowledge pushing through him and filling him up until he sinks slowly out of the dream with the weight of it.

Kavinsky wakes on a hitched breath, heart measured and steady in his chest. It's so unlike the gasping and flailing that accompanies his pill induced dreams that Kavinsky wonders whether any of it was real.

He’s afraid to turn over, afraid to open his eyes, lies there with his eyes squeezed shut and his hands balled into fists. There’s a whisper of sound next to him and the sudden heat of someone beside him, hovering over him. They stay like that a minute, two until they realise Kavinsky isn’t going to move. “Open your eyes,” they say, fingers pressed to Kavinsky’s jaw and Kavinsky has to obey, opens his eyes and finds himself nose to nose with Prokopenko.

“Thank fuck,” Kavinsky breathes and if his voice isn’t steady, neither of them mention it. Kavinsky pulls Prokopenko down next to him and rolls over so he’s half on top of him, nose tucked into his throat and arm a band around Prokopenko’s waist. Prokopenko grumbles a little but shifts around until he’s got a hand tight in Kavinsky’s hair, reassurance for them both.

“We’ll have to deal with that,” Prokopenko mutters quietly a while later. Kavinsky doesn’t bother moving, already knows what Prokopenko is referring to but he’s not worried about how they’re going to dispose of the body. There’s a tug in his chest, pulsing just slightly out of sync with his heart and with each pulse a word is sighed into his mind. _Cabeswater_. Cabeswater will take the body and Kavinsky will take Prokopenko.

END

**Author's Note:**

> always ready to talk about prokopinksy if you're so inclined: [trailmydust](http://trailmydust.tumblr.com)


End file.
